so many changes, my head is spinning

My new teapot arrived from the UK.....I hadn't owned one in about 20 years, I didn't need one, as I was addicted to coffee. I was also addicted to nicotine and to sugar/starches.

And it's all beginning to make sense now.

I've been fighting with depression pretty much all of my adult life, actually it started when I was a teenager. I believe it had to do with my being overweight from childhood. So food was my friend (or so I thought), and a few years later it was cigarettes, coffee and food.

I finally beat my food addiction in 2005, I lost a lot of weight and kept it off longterm. (I'm still very careful with anything sweet though, too much sugar and I feel the old me emerging.)

Then, on 7/24/2012 the stroke hit me (I will never, *ever* say "my" in relation to the stroke, I will not own it). And, since I was in a wheelchair and in the hospital, I just didn't smoke. I desperately wanted to, and my doctors and nurses asked me every day about it, because I had told them how addicted I was. With every test it became clearer that the arteriosclerosis (no plaque though) was directly linked to my smoking for decades. No other reason for the stroke has been found. Whenever somebody asked me whether I had smoked or not, I said that the only reason that kept me from smoking was shame. Shame because one of my doctors could have seen me outside, after a stroke, in a wheelchair, smoking.

And to a point it still is like that today, almost 14 months later. Sometimes I get *violent* urges to smoke, but so far I succeeded. I know I'm only 1 puff away from being a 1 pack per day smoker again.

That leaves coffee.

A while ago I became vegan (easy for me, I already had been a vegetarian for about 15 years, then went back to eating meat, but never ate much of it), and almost immediately I started to read lots and lots about strokes, Graves' Disease (which I've been suffering from since 1993), the works....trying to live a healthier life than before the stroke. I read that the biggest enemies when you have GD are: nicotine, caffeine and alcohol. Alcohol I never liked, but I sure have to raise my hand for the other two. Also in relation to both, stroke and GD, I read more than once that they are "the worrier's disease". That hit me really hard, as I've been constantly worrying so much about so many, many things for about 30 years. I'm trying to work on that too, but boy, people sure don't like when one tries to change. Trying to go from empathy (to the point that I feel other people's pain and make other people's problems my own) to emotional detachment is not easy, not for me, but definitely not for other people either it seems. I'm trying not to get another stroke though, and since I'm convinced that both, GD and the stroke were mostly caused by longterm and extreme emotional stress, I must look at what's best for myself at this point in my life.

Anyway, one of the things I try now, is to stop my caffeine addiction too. It's easier than I had thought, I guess not smoking anymore makes it easier for me to stop caffeine too. I went from many, *many* coffees each day to 1 in the morning. I'm becoming a tea lover now, herbal and fruit tea only (no caffeine).....and I just found spicy Yogi tea, yum!

And this is the, admittedly, longwinded story why the pretty teapot above landed on my doorstep. ;)